


In Tomorrow, There is You

by TaeAelin



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Affection, Conversations, Desert, Developing Relationship, F/M, Fever, Hurt/Comfort, Late at Night, Mild Blood, Nux Lives, Post-Mad Max: Fury Road, Scarification, Scars, Sickfic, Survival, Terminal Illnesses, War Boys Showing Affection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-29
Updated: 2015-08-29
Packaged: 2018-04-17 18:42:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4677239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaeAelin/pseuds/TaeAelin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Change has taken root, but there’s still no cure for the War Boys. Capable tries to convince an ailing Nux to accept her help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Tomorrow, There is You

**Author's Note:**

> All credit for the opening verse to Benjamin Alire Saenz - extract from To The Desert, 1995.

_ _

_I came to you one rainless August night._

_You taught me how to live without the rain._

_You are thirst and thirst is all I know._

_You are sand, wind, sun, and burning sky,_

_The hottest blue. You blow a breeze and brand_

_Your breath into my mouth. You reach—then bend_

_Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new_ _._

The grains squashed through the web of her fingers, flattened under her knees. The dunes had an almost greasy feeling to them, leaving her palms oily as she crawled up the slippery incline. In the beforedays, Capable would not have left the Bio-Dome at night. It was one of the many non-alloweds. She liked to tell herself that was the whole reason. _You are a precious resource_ , The Keeper had said. _Precious resources are scarce._ And in the hands of the many, all are divided, all are devoured. There had been so very many hands outside the Bio-Dome.

The war had made her a watcher. There was a lot to make new, a lot to let die. The War Boys never used to sleep under the star-blanket, they had always kept coiled in the dredges of the machinery, the pipelines of their steel hive. But, not long after tomorrow had taken hold, Nux had found a new spot at the top of one of the seeping sandcrests. From afar, his anaemic body looked almost peaceful, the gritty rubble almost soft. An expired fantasy, just like the bio-bubble.

In her most indulgent moments, she liked to imagine he could dream. His eyes were closed at least, blackened lids twitching as the nightfever rolled below. As she curled up to his side, his breathing quickened then snagged, and he awoke with a strangled gasp, choking on the dark.

" _Sh-ssh_ ” she murmured, catching his shoulders as he strained his torso from the sand. "Just me."

Scraping his nose against his fist, he nodded, shivering under her hold. It was a nervous nod, to match the uneven smile. That jittery sort of pleased that snaked beneath her solar plexus and made her feel settled somehow.

“Y’knew I was here?” His voice was chapped, and he gave an audible swallow.

“Saw you from the top.”

Up close, the moonlight sucked the pallor to the surface of his body in a way the gas lamps didn’t. Threadbare skin, slick with sweat. He smudged his wrist against his septum a second time, crude red cutting the white of his cheek.

Her face fell in recognition, his ease plummeting alongside. With nothing else to mend it, he pinched a thumb and forefinger below the bridge of his nose, a fracture of blood winding over his knuckles.

“Sorry- ‘happens”

It was no surprise, and she already knew. Life leaked out of the War Boys like a rusty raintank, you just had to keep pumping it back in. Never quick enough.

“Hey- c’mere.”

Her fingertips scuffed against her ankles, finding the hem of her dress. Winding the fabric up and over her knees, it was long enough to reach his face with length to spare, and she cupped the material over her hand before gently pressing at his nostrils. Makeshift. Perhaps the only familiar thing about it.

“How long has it been?”

His eyelids flinched above the bandage. “Hey?”

The word sounded sticky in his mouth. She smoothed a thumb over the bend of his arm, the constellation of half-healed hollows. He jerked at the touch, quickly looking regretful as she pulled the hand away.

“’bout four weeks?”

She had thought as much. It was hardly difficult to find the timerates once she’d walked the lower corridors. The Arteries. Slit could get by at ten. Four was bad. And volunteers were few now, whilst talk flowed free. Sustainability, viability. Her expression was rough now. She knew, because she saw his soften.

“S’okay.”

If he’d wanted to say more, the words decayed before he could stumble over them. Her own throat prickling, she pressed to spit the rest out before her nerve dried up too.

“Would you let me give you some of mine?”

His pupils dilated as he started at her, unblinking. Then came the recognition and the yelp of refusal, blotted behind the folds of the dressing. Recoiling, he tried to gather his legs beneath him, only to sink backward as the fever reared and raked him down.

“Stop, stop-”

“-you’re not a blood bag!”

He was trembling, violently now. Crumpling the stained fabric back beneath her thighs, she took his hand and clutched it, waiting for his pulse to slow. He held tighter than she thought he had strength.

“Not if you don’t want me to.” She paused, scooping up the quiet determination that came easier to her now. “But we did this- both of us. And I want you to see the rest. I want you to see the end.”

She gave a crooked smile, the best she could manage. He watched from the recesses of his unease. Then, gentler, he drew her palm to his chest, the ribbons of repatched skin. Even in the dark she could follow the ridges, slippery fault lines bulging to pistons and valves and bearings. The scars were the smoothest part of his body. Beneath, nothing moved.

She took a breath, her fingers drawn to the centre of the piece. “Did it hurt?”

“No, no-”

He scrambled out from under the suggestion before she had finished, trailing off with an apologetic frown and whatever else he could not say. Grazing his chin against his collarbone, he rubbed his knuckles at his sternum, some itch on the wrong side of the flesh.

Skimming the viscid grit from her free hand, she licked the pad of her thumb, the residual dust biting at the roof of her mouth. She reached and smeared away the blood that had dried over his lip.

“Now you look less punchy at least.”

Glancing up at her in surprise, he sniffed, then gave a watery laugh. She shuffled forward, letting her arms drop around his waist. His muscles momentarily seized at the touch, but he tucked his forehead into her hair all the same.

“Are you afraid to tell me it hurt?”

He shook his head, stalling on the brink of an answer before she reached it herself.

“…are you afraid to tell me it didn’t?”

 

-

 

He tumbled toward the line-up, the glittering silver bodies facing off to the open plains, the hum of the eight fused with the howls of his brethren.

It was a supply run, the first of the hot months. The prospect shot him up with adrenaline, a better fix than a day on the blood bags. The raw cramps and spitting nausea spun away under the bellowing of the engines, the tongues. He was almost on the verge of hearing it, the voice inside the call, when Slit snarled past him, his shoulder hard as the octane.

A throbbing cheer and Sit roared at the crowd, heat from the motors pluming in shimmering answer as he pelted toward the Chevy. The sound, the fumes; and Nux felt the impulse boil within him, the drive that had got him this far.

Slit had drawn up first, already fitting his wheel before he could make an argument. The ruined face turned at the spray of sand beside him, glaring as Nux made the hazardous plea.

“I want on?”

“Shotgun’s taken.” Slit grunted at the passenger seat, a bloated steel water barrel strapped-in for trade.

Rutting a fist at the scale of sunburn on his neck, Nux flicked his forehead to the lancer perch.

“I’ll ride up front- cross the boundary line before you even.”

Slit laughed, a chaotic hiss and two flares alight in his eyeballs as he realised it was no joke. Grinning, he stilled, then lunged open the driverside door, chain already in hand. Nux careened forward, kicking up to the perch at the head of the vehicle and clutching the metal cross-bar. Snatching up the chain before Slit could make a mess of it, he criss-crossed the blistering metal around the join and his wrist, links puckering his skin as he pulled too tight.

“Don’t fall off,” Slit warned, “or I’ll be dragging you all the way to Bullet Farm.”

Nux shook his head fiercely, skittish with excitement. Jamming shut his eyes, he waited until he felt the slam of the doors, the churn of the ignition. He held until the rotors fired behind him, opening them at the moment the road ignited in their path. He inhaled, the speed screaming into his face as the coupe stormed over the landscape.

The buzzing air came to life as Slit pitched out in front, the convoy dropping to either side. Nux rattled his chain against the lancer spears, their explosive tips scraping against the sky. He gritted his teeth as a swarm of a gnats needled his face and chest, their tired, liquid bodies exploding from the impact.

“Won’t even need to clean the windshield after this!” Slit crowed, reaching a hand to thump on the stripped dash to get Nux’s attention.

Nux drummed and yipped in answer, spreading an arm to let the wind pelt him from all sides, pulling the corners of his mouth back till a fissure of salvia sliced across his cheek. The rush carved so deep that the choke of the half-life loosened, and the Outlands spattered into the blur of the horizon.

His vision had narrowed in the time before, a view speckled with colours that didn’t exist in the workshop. They weren’t the good colours- not the kind that shone or mirrored- they were the kind that dissolved in an arc, just after a spray of water cut through the air. The kind that meant something you needed was coming to an end. But for now, the most lovely day was all around him, a day that could easily go forth to the gates, then on to forever. The burn of the exposed engine welted at the small of his spine. It was salvation and it was euphoria. He swallowed the desert whole.

When dark gravel finally pitted the skyline, the choking waste that marked Bullet-way, Slit kept on full throttle. It wasn’t until the last second that he intentionally oversteered, sending the tyres in a rippling crescent that left them facing the entirely opposite direction. Stepping out of the cab, Slit gave a great whoop and took a couple of lightheaded steps backwards. He waved triumphantly to an exultant Nux, who was still peeling the chain back from the welts at his wrist.

“Beat’cha over the line after all, didn’t I!”

 

-

 

Scarcely a kick from the tower, he made the snare of a death trap seem like a wilderness of absolution, the bleakness his own brand of hope. For all his misguided beliefs, she still wasn’t sure she had never been free.

“You know, the day I was chosen. It was every bit as grand as the stories.”

Nux looked down, fidgeting his lower lip in his teeth. She liked how she didn’t have to explain. They had both seen the glory from afar, the truth too close.

“I wanted to remember everything, every moment. The drums, the fire, the flags. Everything that signalled his importance. _My_ importance.”

Deliberately cautious, she unwound an arm from their embrace to reach for the yellow tube and cannulas, cached within the dress-sheet at her abdomen. Easy to find. The plastic coils infested in the crevices of every workshop like ringworm, scratches of the War Boys who hadn’t returned. She laid the offering to rest in her lap.

“The people looked to me with wonder, to him with intimidation. I made it into a chant- _this is my real self, this is my becoming._ Nothing of how he looked or what he said to me made a mark. I kept telling myself that bit wasn’t real. Just some nasty story my friends had made up to spoil things.”

His ribcage flinched as he suppressed a shudder, eyebrows nudging upward above the bridge of his nose, downward at the dampened corners of his eyes.

“I remembered that day for a long time after. It came to me when I was lonely, and when I wished for my friends back instead, and ached for the teasing that always nipped beneath my skin. I would remember the cheering and how they would all have wished to be in my place.”

A reluctant curl at the fringe of his lip, some bad taste he hadn’t quite burnt out. Loosing a hand where it rested at her back, he swiped at the sweat that had cooled above the ridges of his cheekbones, then wrapped back into her. He fit himself a little better this time, his spikes and spurs winding within her own.

“Then, after a while, I found myself replaying the wrong memory. Some dream, something I had watched happen to one of the other wives. And when I tried to bring back my own, all I had left were these imagined pieces, little fantasies tied together by everything I had wanted.”

He glanced at her, his face close enough that she could make out the sunken shadows beneath the paint, the sores that may have once healed.

“And I realised, I honestly didn't know how that day went at all. All that was left was the feeling. Of being something that mattered. And I only knew that part was real, because it was the exact opposite of what I knew was true.”

His cold fingertips left her waist, licking over the feeder tube as if it were something dangerous, or something that might break. Puppet shadows in the dark.

Her throat clenched with anticipation, and she drew back from him, beseeching.

“I already checked. I’m an All-Type.”

He winced, gripped by some momentary sting. Then, with a sad grimace, he took the instrument by the neck.

“Capable.” His voice still raspy from exhaustion, he held her name on the edge of his teeth, almost afraid he would drop it. “With or without this, you do already matter.”

Seeing his gaze slipping, she helped guide his shoulders back into the sand, familiar with the vertigo that seemed to claw alongside the chill of dawn. In lieu of a nod, he gave a grateful blink, a weak squeeze at her wrist.

“I know I’m not just a resource.” She whispered. “But, what I’m trying to make you see is, you matter too.”

With her left hand, she made the Vuvalini symbol to show she was sincere. _To me._

His eyes widened in earnest, and he moved his own palm to answer it. _And I am with you._

A warmth spreading through her chest, she quirked a half-grin. “If you think about it, it’s almost like making a supply run. But together.”

Unfamiliar amusement twitched at the corners of his mouth. “This is a lot scarier than making a supply run.”

As she gathered one of the hollow needles, extending the bend of her arm, he reached through the wall of scar tissue.

“But I’m glad you’re taking me there.”

He looked almost mortal when he smiled.

 

-

 

Thank you for reading! (: 

Comments and kudos are always welcome, or chat to me about War Boys on [Tumblr!](http://taeaelin.tumblr.com/)


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